A successful medical treatment program relies heavily on patients' compliance with prescription regimens established by doctors. Remembering to take a pill can be a demanding responsibility, especially if the prescribed time is not near a meal or when the patient first gets up in the morning. This forgetfulness becomes even more of a problem when dealing with the elderly. As individuals become older, the number of different medications they take usually increases, resulting in complex prescription regimens. Forgetting to take a pill, or taking medication at the wrong time, can lead to harmful results. Presently, adverse drug responses are responsible for 30,000 deaths per year and 1.5 million hospital admissions per year. With the number of individuals over 55 years of age who are on complex prescription regimens at 30 million and rising, a tremendous need has developed for a memory assistance device which will improve prescription compliance.
A successful reminder device will be 1) portable, so that patients can travel freely and not miss the alert; 2) communicable, with a processing unit for monitoring the response of the patient to the alert so as to ensure that the medication was actually taken; 3) communicable, through the processing unit, with a supervisory unit, positioned in a physician's office, pharmacy and/or health care providers facilities so that noncompliance with the prescription regimen can be detected and addressed immediately; and 4) reprogrammable with great ease from various locations, including the physician's office and the pharmacy.
While efforts have been made to develop reminder systems, none has proven successful because of its inability to incorporate the above features. A long felt need exists for reminder devices that effectively embody all of the attributes listed above.
The present invention describes and claims a reminder apparatus that solves these needs associated with improved prescription compliance.